Celebrating 100 years of women’s suffrage in 2019 is an excellent reason to reinvigorate the debate on the position of women in politics and public administration in the Netherlands. In this essay, we look at trends and figures, as well as discuss the measures that Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations Kajsa Ollongren puts forward in her recent letter to Parliament: (1) inclusive selection and selection procedures; (2) actively inviting and recruiting candidates; and (3) good equipment for political office. We try to inform the debate about the position of women in politics with new insights and knowledge from academic research.

Despite notable progress, women remain heavily underrepresented in virtually all layers of the Dutch political system. Only one in three Dutch MPs is currently female. The Minister of the Interior has recently made a number of suggestions to increase gender diversity in politics, in light of 100 years of active voting rights for women. Gender in politics is about much more than the number of women though: it is about the role and position of women in politics as well as about the uneven gendered influence of politics. This introduction discusses the importance of focusing on women and gender in politics, and introduces the four contributions to this Dossier. We specifically call for an intersectional perspective and the various dimensions of gender in and of politics.

Een historische toevoeging aan het sprookje van politieke gelijkheid

In 2019, throughout The Netherlands, 100 years of women’s suffrage was celebrated. This celebration is historically incorrect: the voting law from 1919, broadly seen as the law that gave all Dutch women the right to vote, was a discriminatory law. It excluded many women – mostly those living in the former colonized parts of the Kingdom of The Netherlands – for decades after the laws implementation. This article shares a more complete history of women’s suffrage in The Netherlands, through the history of the voting law in the entire Kingdom of The Netherlands. The article gives insight into how this historical political exclusion still contributes to a lack of representation of many women in The Netherlands.